Food / Cooking

San Diego Food - Restaurants, Recipes and Nutrition

The pick: Baked Vegetable Crisps from Good Natured Selects Why they rate: These gluten-free baked crips, available in original and ranch flavors, give you the satisfying crunch of a potato chip, but with a lot less guilt. A 1-ounce serving of the crisps contains a half-serving of veggies — including carrots, bell peppers and spinach. That same serving is 110 calories and 2 grams of fat, with no artificial ingredients. They are recognized by the USDA as a school-acceptable snack. Info: Suggested retail price is 35 cents for a 1-ounce bag, $1.49 for a 2-ounce bag and $3.99 for the 6.5-ounce size. The chips are sold at Big Lots, Rite Aid, CVS and 7-Eleven, as well as a number of independent local markets.

Italophilia: The admiration, appreciation and love of Italy, its culture, its language and its people. I’ve had a strong case of it, even more enhanced by the new PBS documentary series I’ve been enjoying titled “The Italian Americans.” My fascination with everything Italian started when I went to work for Giuseppe Amorelli, a real estate broker in a mainly Italian community known as Astoria, N.Y. He was only my employer for a day or two, ...

Food mecca? Nearly 10 percent of Yelp’s 2015 top 100 places to eat in the United States are in San Diego County. The eclectic list is based on customers’ ratings analyzed by the online site’s science team. Nine local eateries made the list. One was in the top 10. Bobboi Natural Gelato at the foot of Girard Street in La Jolla scored seventh place. The top-rated restaurant overall? Copper Top BBQ in Big Pine, Calif., ...

I received a number of thoughtful notes from readers who were worried about me, having read about my visit to New York and the ominous news of the impending blizzard. Fortunately, I was on a plane back to San Diego just before the big storm had arrived, but thank you for your concern. Forecasters predicted it would be one of the worst blizzards ever to hit The Big Apple, but as it turned out, it ...